The Lull Before the Storm: the Worst May Be Yet to Come in the Korean Peninsula
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ARI 111/2020 24 September 2020 The lull before the storm: the worst may be yet to come in the Korean Peninsula Antoine Bondaz | Director of the FRS-KF Korea Program and Assistant Professor at Sciences Po | @AntoineBondaz Theme The situation on the Korean peninsula remains highly volatile and upcoming events could have a significant impact on the region. The EU and its member states should stand ready. Summary It would be both an analytical and a political mistake to believe the situation in the Korean Peninsula is stable and lastingly improved thanks to the diplomatic efforts initiated in 2018. Despite the political stage-setting, the very problems on the Peninsula remain: inter-Korean relations are not improving and agreements reached in both Panmunjom and Pyongyang are not implemented while cooperation and even communications are at a standstill; North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes are ongoing and have significantly strengthened North Korean capacities while negotiations are at a dead- end. The upcoming 2020 US presidential election in November and the 8th Congress of the Workers Party of Korea (WPK) in January 2021 will be two major events shaping the coming events. It is essential for the EU and its member states to be more proactive, and move from a strategy of critical engagement to implementing a strategy of credible commitments.1 Analysis Typhoon Bavi, which hit the Korean peninsula at the end of August, may only be an omen that after the relative calm of just under three years a storm may be about to hit again. Recent inter-Korean tensions and North Korean declarations could be a preview of what could come in early 2021 in the Korean Peninsula. With a likely new US Administration and a new North Korean national strategy supposedly to be presented next January, the risk of renewed tensions is real, the lack of trust remains an overarching element of relations and the fundamentals that are destabilising the peninsula remain. While the last few years were marked by relative calm and a partial resumption of dialogue at the highest level –especially compared with the tensions of 2017– it is important to avoid two misapprehensions. The first would be to believe that because of the high-level meetings in 2018/2019 and the exchange of courtesies between leaders, 1 Antoine Bondaz (2020), ‘Reinvigorating the EU’s strategy toward North Korea: from critical engagement to credible commitments’, 38 North, 16/IV/2020. 1 The lull before the storm: the worst may be yet to come in the Korean Peninsula ARI 111/2020 - 24/9/2020 - Elcano Royal Institute the situation on the Korean peninsula has been permanently stabilised. The truth is quite the opposite. As President Moon expressed at the opening of 21st National Assembly last July, ‘managing inter-Korean and US-North Korea relations is still akin to skating on thin ice’. The second would be to think that because North Korea has not conducted a nuclear test since September 2017 or a long-range ballistic missile test since November 2017, the North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile programs are on hold. On the opposite, the North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile crisis is the most serious proliferation crisis the international community currently face on the world stage. From moonshine to sunset policy: inter-Korean relations at a standstill On 16 June, the North Korean authorities demolished an inter-Korean liaison office in the border city of Kaesong. Temporarily closed since 31 January amid fears of the spread of the COVID-19 virus, the office had been opened in 2018 to facilitate dialogue between the two Koreas. Pyongyang violently criticised Seoul, asserting that ‘the south side has systematically breached and destroyed the Panmunjom Declaration, Pyongyang Declaration and agreements between the north and the south while openly doing all sorts of hostile acts including war exercises against the north’.2 While the absence of a military escalation between the two Koreas is to be welcomed, it must be acknowledged that the recent hopes symbolised by the three inter-Korean summits are now a long way off. This deterioration in relations should not come as a surprise for at least three reasons. First, there is a growing frustration in both Pyongyang and Seoul since the two main goals –improving inter-Korean relations and denuclearising North Korea– are now fully intertwined because of sanctions, limiting the possibility of the former to be reached without concrete progress with the latter. In the early 2000s, the Sunshine Policy and its successor was an unconditional strategy of engagement, enabling more than 350,000 South Korean tourists to visit Mount Kumgang and inter-Korean trade to reach US$1.8 billion in 2007 despite the first nuclear test in 2006. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, inter-Korean trade was initially partly preserved despite nuclear tests in 2009 and 2013, but in 2016 Seoul decided to close the Kaesong inter-Korean industrial complex while a new set of UNSC resolutions in 2016 and 2017 made any cooperation between the two Koreas much more constrained.3 The recent June incident in Kaesong, which was a direct provocation to South Korea, while calibrated and limited –a very symbolic provocation but on North Korean territory, non-military and not threatening the security of the South Koreans and undoubtedly targeting Seoul and not Washington–, may be only the beginning if by the end of the year the North Koreans consider that Seoul can no longer contribute to the improvement of inter-Korean relations and that Pyongyang has nothing to expect any longer from Seoul. Secondly, Seoul has no more aces up its sleeves in dealing with Pyongyang and has almost reached the limit of what South Korea can do without violating international sanctions, causing additional tensions in the US-ROK alliance, or bearing too big a political cost. In terms of diplomatic strategy and political communication, the Moon administration played well all the cards it had from sport and cultural diplomacy to inter- 2 ‘KCNA commentary on height of impudence’, KCNA, 17/VI/2020. 3 Antoine Bondaz (2017), ‘Kaesong, caught between two Koreas’, Books and Ideas, June. 2 The lull before the storm: the worst may be yet to come in the Korean Peninsula ARI 111/2020 - 24/9/2020 - Elcano Royal Institute Korean summits, from military to military cooperation to railways field surveys, etc. Yet, in 2019, the dynamic stopped brutally. Despite the landslide victory of the Democratic Party and its satellite, the Platform Party, at the 2020 South Korean legislative election last April, there is not much President Moon can do. Figure 1. Inter-Korean dialogue: number of meetings in each field, 2002-2019 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Politics Military Economy Humanitarian issues Society and Culture Source: the author on Ministry of Unification data. While 36 inter-Korean meetings were organised in 2018, as much as in 2003 at the height of the Sunshine Policy of President Kim Dae-jung, no meetings were organised in 2019 and so far in 2020. Inter-Korean trade is also de facto non-existent, North Korea being more dependent than ever on its trade with China, and the recurring attempt from Seoul to authorize South Korean tourists to go back sightseeing to North Korea never materialized. Even the sugar-for-liquor barter deal presented by the South Korean Ministry of Unification in August 2020 was scrapped after a North Korean company involved in the process was found to have been flagged under international sanctions. This is even more regrettable since Seoul tried several months ago to take advantage of the pandemic to strengthen health cooperation with Pyongyang, which North Korea does not seem at all ready to accept. 3 The lull before the storm: the worst may be yet to come in the Korean Peninsula ARI 111/2020 - 24/9/2020 - Elcano Royal Institute Figure 2. Inter-Korean trade: trade volume in millions of US$, 2003-2019 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 South Korean imports South Korean exports Source: the author on Ministry of Reunification data. Thirdly, Pyongyang and Seoul no longer share the same priorities and interests for each other, Pyongyang’s motives being mostly instrumental regarding Seoul. While South Korea played a central role in the diplomatic process initiated in 2018, facilitating the resumption of dialogue between North Korea and the US and the organisation of the Singapore and Hanoi summits, the country now plays a secondary role. President Moon’s willingness to formalise all the outcomes of previous inter-Korean summits by the National Assembly and to stage the first-ever inter-Korean parliamentary meeting would not change North Korea’s current lack of interest. Indeed, North Korea now needs no intermediary either to communicate with the US or to organise a high-level meeting. Instead, the main problem for Pyongyang is the likely political alternation in Washington, which could bring to power a Democrat Administration far less inclined to make political concessions, let alone concrete ones. On the other hand, since South Korea is not able to bring the economic benefits so long awaited by North Korea, the latter is turning to China, Russia and the countries of South-East Asia. That strategy was set in motion in 2019 but undermined by the COVID-19 pandemic which has made it impossible to inaugurate and open the tourist complex of Wonsan or that of Samjiyon to foreign tourists, or render the long-awaited recent connection of the bridge built by China at Dandong several years ago with the North Korean road network unnecessary.